Either This Or Have School Year Round

9:30 AM, May 14, 2009

The school year is winding down. And as teenagers draw ever closer to summer vacation, so comes the inevitable boredom that will result in increased attendance at malls and superstores, abundant applications for summer jobs at malls and superstores, and in some cases, trapped evil spirits running amok at malls and superstores.

Let us explain. In a time of sterner justice and purer psychiatry—roughly between 6000 BCE and 1700 AD—unwanted misbehavior was cured by means of a now out of vogue surgical treatment called trepanation. A precursor to the modern-day lobotomy, trepanation involved the extraction of the Stone of Folly, also known as the Stone of Madness, a small portion of the human skull. Once the Stone of Folly was removed, the malignant spirits trapped inside of the head of the patient would escape, returning to their own hell dimension. The treatment was used to cure seizures, migraines, sexual deviancies, and, relevant here, adolescent rebellion.

Last month, three teenagers were caught stealing a whiskey flask, a pair of sunglasses, and a memory card from a West Knoxville superstore. One of them admitted to police that it was "all [his] idea." But what he was really trying to say was, "I am possessed of banshees! Please remove my Stone of Madness and give it over to the village clergy so they may use it to heal the lame! Take mercy on my fellows and sentence them to a few years indentured servitude!"